Drug Safety Communications are used by the Food and Drug Administration to inform health care providers, patients, caregivers, and the general public about safety issues related to FDA-approved drugs. To assess patient knowledge of the messaging contained in DSCs related to the sleep aids zolpidem and eszopiclone, we conducted a large, cross-sectional patient survey of 1,982 commercially insured patients selected by stratified random sampling from the Optum Research Database who had filled at least two prescriptions for either zolpidem or eszopiclone (...) between July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013. Among the 594 respondents, two-thirds reported hearing generally about drug safety information prior to starting a new drug, with the remaining one-third “rarely” or “never” hearing such information. Providers and pharmacists were primary sources of drug safety information. Two-thirds of zolpidem users and half of eszopiclone users reported having heard about the related DSC messages, ability to accurately identify the major factual messages was limited. Respondents reacted to new drug safety information about their sleep aids by reporting that they would want to learn about alternative ways to help them sleep and seek out more information about the safety of their specific sleeping pill. Opportunities may exist for the FDA to work with providers and pharmacies to help ensure the DSC information is more widely received and is more fully understood by those taking the affected medications. (shrink)

This chapter is an edited transcription of an author-meets-critics session at the Truth 20|20 Conference, on Cheryl Misak’s book, Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers (2020, Oxford University Press). Misak provides a brief overview of Ramsey’s life and the remarkable philosophical significance of his work. Blackburn raises a biographical-philosophical question about the origins (in history and in Ramsey’s thought) of what is now called the ‘Ramsification’ of a theory, and whether this was novel with Ramsey or whether the (...) basic idea had appeared earlier in works by Newman and Russell. Hornsby raises questions about Ramsey’s work on truth, particularly to do with his stance on correspondence theories and endorsement of pragmatism. Hornsby further raises some skeptical concerns that a pragmatist account suitable for completing Ramsey’s project will ever be forthcoming. (shrink)

Cheryl Misak offers a strikingly new view of the development of philosophy in the twentieth century. Pragmatism, the home-grown philosophy of America, thinks of truth not as a static relation between a sentence and the believer-independent world, but rather, a belief that works. The founders of pragmatism, Peirce and James, developed this idea in more and less objective ways. The standard story of the reception of American pragmatism in England is that Russell and Moore savaged James's theory, and that (...) pragmatism has never fully recovered. An alternative, and underappreciated, story is told here. The brilliant Cambridge mathematician, philosopher and economist, Frank Ramsey, was in the mid-1920s heavily influenced by the almost-unheard-of Peirce and was developing a pragmatist position of great promise. He then transmitted that pragmatism to his friend Wittgenstein, although had Ramsey lived past the age of 26 to see what Wittgenstein did with that position, Ramsey would not have liked what he saw. (shrink)

Cheryl Misak argues that truth ought to be reinstated to a central position in moral and political philosophy. She argues that the correct account of truth is one found in a certain kind of pragmatism: a true belief is one upon which inquiry could not improve, a belief which would not be defeated by experience and argument. This account is not only an improvement on the views of central figures such as Rawls and Habermas, but it can also make (...) sense of the idea that, despite conflict, pluralism, and the expression of difference, our moral and political beliefs aim at truth and can be subject to criticism. Anyone interested in a fresh discussion of political theory and philosophy will find this a fascinating read. (shrink)

Cheryl Misak presents a history of the great American philosophical tradition of pragmatism, from its inception in the 1870s to the present day. She traces the connections between classical American pragmatism and contemporary analytic philosophy, and draws out the continuing influence of pragmatist ideas in the recent history of philosophy.

This study investigates professional tax practitioners' ethical judgments and behavioral intentions in cases involving client pressure to adopt aggressive reporting positions, an issue that has been identified as the most difficult ethical/moral problem facing public accounting practitioners. The multidimensional ethics scale (MES) was used to measure the extent to which a hypothetical behavior was consistent with five ethical philosophies (moral equity, contractualism, utilitarianism, relativism, and egoism). Responses from a sample of 67 tax professionals supported the existence of all dimensions of (...) the MES other than egoism. Regressions of ethical judgments and behavioral intentions on the MES dimensions indicate that ethical decision making is most heavily influenced by the moral equity dimension, followed by the contractualism dimension. In contrast, the utilitarianism and relativism dimensions were only related to ethical judgments and behavioral intentions in isolated instances. (shrink)

Frank Ramsey was a brilliant Cambridge philosopher, mathematician, and economist who died in 1930 at 26 having made landmark contributions to decision theory, game theory, mathematics, logic, semantics, philosophy of science, and the theory of truth. This rich biography tells the story of his extraordinary life and intellectual achievement.

When fat people are depicted in popular media, we often take their behavior to be representative of all fat people. How one fat person acts becomes representative of a broader pattern of behavior that all fat people are presumed to share, shaping the way we understand fatness. This way of generalizing presents fatness as a singular experience, reducing fat people to a monolithic narrative that often reinforces anti-fat bias. How do we avoid this reduction? How can we responsibly depict fat (...) characters without perpetuating negative stereotypes about real fat people? Using the case of “Fat Thor” from Avengers: Endgame, I propose the beginnings of an account of responsible artistic agency which can be used to improve the ways that marginalized communities are depicted in art, with a particular focus on fat communities. Central to this account are two features: inclusion of and deference to members of the communities depicted from a variety of backgrounds throughout the production process, and mindfulness of the preexisting narrative web built around the communities depicted. I will use this discussion to highlight the need for a drastic shift in how we consider marginalized populations in art—in reimagining both who tells their stories, and what stories are told on their behalf. (shrink)

In this paper we introduce a computational control framework that can keep AI-driven military autonomous devices operating within the boundaries set by applicable rules of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) related to targeting. We discuss the necessary legal tests and variables, and introduce the structure of a hypothetical IHL-compliant targeting system.

Like all fields of inquiry, Irish studies has its own traditions, its own ways of organizing information. even the most adventurous of the native practitioners tend carefully to maintain disciplinary boundaries when presenting evidence to sustain a thesis, and American scholars have used Irish practice as their frame of reference. This essay, which engages with the time-honored and increasingly vexed enterprise of defining “Irishness,” introduces play into these traditions both in spirit and in methodology. An alternative approach to analyzing Ireland (...) might foreground the underlying assumptions about social relations and historical patterns that link Irish art and writing across diverse fields of inquiry. Exploring the many rhetorics of Ireland might make it impossible, for example, for those involved in the essential task of historical and scientific inquiry—to overlook the submessages of popular Irish representations.I begin, obliquely, with a contrast between American and Irish censorship of music videos. My inquiry targets some fundamental differences between American and Irish appropriations of the body, from which the essay suggests symmetries between the psychological development of individuals in Ireland and one stage in what might be termed the psychohistory of Irish culture. As an experimental, semidisruptive piece that challenges disciplinary lines in the field and introduces fresh theoretical categories, this essay reaches toward a new Irish studies. Cheryl Herr, associate professor of English at the University of Iowa, has published Joyce’s Anatomy of Culture and For the Land They Loved: Irish Political Melodramas, 1890-1925 . Two of her current projects involve spatial organization in Ireland and the syntax of English modernism. (shrink)

"Living in Death: the Evolution of Modern Vampirism" traces the evolution of folkloric and fictional vampirism in three parts: the history of the vampire; the concept of undead; and the transition of the modern vampire during the nineteenth century to present. The thesis provides an explanation of why a culture that views life and death as a binary opposition would create a being that exists between these two finite realms of consciousness ultimately on the assumption that the body continues to (...) function after death. This "third" state of consciousness places the vampire in a liminal state of being; neither alive nor dead, but living in death. (shrink)

Volume 13, Issue 3-4, August - December 2019, Page 486-488.

Despite recognition of the importance of family in health‐care and progress in family theory development, there has been limited transfer of family theory to acute care nursing practice. We argue that this family theory–practice gap results from a persistent lack of conceptual clarity in family nursing and other barriers. Lack of conceptual clarity takes the form of conceptual overlap and semantic inconsistency, as well as the complexity of language found in the family nursing literature. Barriers include practice contexts, relational problems, (...) and knowledge types. Our exploration begins with a brief discussion of the intimate link between nursing theory and practice followed by an overview of some issues associated with the family nursing theory–practice gap. Based on a synthesis of family nursing literature, problems associated with conceptual clarity in family nursing theory are explored. We conclude with recommendations for family nursing research to develop concepts grounded in nursing practice. (shrink)

The problem with many archives is that they are searchable only by supplementary metadata, rather than secondary metadata ; information about a visual object is not always reliable, especially when it comes to Black Canadians. Supplementary metadata in Canadian archives are not classified by race or ethnicity, thus, the very structure of the archive erases from public memory the lived experiences of Black Canadians. Given the move toward digitization over the last fifteen years, the importance of the archive has become (...) a topic of discussion. Since the public can now search through on-line collections, the need to protect and promote material archives has never been more important. This paper will explore the question of the archive-as-subject, rather than archive-as-source, through storytelling. Storytelling is one of the many cultural expressions that have connected Black populations. Using first-person narrative, I give examples from my ten-year-long experience working in Black Canadian archives to probe how the archive can move from its depository role to become a site where memories about Black Canadian experiences across time, space, and place are curated and narrated. What are the ethical challenges around this kind of reform? (shrink)

C.S. Peirce, the founder of pragmatism, argued that truth is what we would agree upon, were inquiry to be pursued as far as it could fruitfully go. In this book, Misak argues for and elucidates the pragmatic account of truth, paying attention both to Peirce's texts and to the requirements of a suitable account of truth. An important argument of the book is that we must be sensitive to the difference between offering a definition of truth and engaging in a (...) distinctively pragmatic project. The pragmatic project spells out the relationship between truth and inquiry; it articulates the consequences of a statement's being true. The existence of a distinct pragmatic enterprise has implications for the status of the pragmatic account of truth and for the way in which philosophy should be conducted. (shrink)

_Verificationism_ is the first comprehensive history of a concept that dominated philosophy and scientific methodology between the 1930s and the 1960s. The verificationist principle - the concept that a belief with no connection to experience is spurious - is the most sophisticated version of empiricism. More flexible ideas of verification are now being rehabilitated by a number of philosophers. C.J. Misak surveys the precursors, the main proponents and the rehabilitators. Unlike traditional studies, she follows verificationist theory beyond the demise of (...) positivism to examine its reappearance in the work of modern philosophers. Most interestingly, she argues that despite feminism's strenuous opposition to positivism, verificationist thought is at the heart of much of contemporary feminist philosophy. _Verificationism_ is an excellent assessment of a major and influential system of thought. (shrink)

In this paper we track the ‘body positivity’ movement from its origins, promoting radical acceptance of marginalized bodies, to its co-optation as a push for self-love for all bodies, including those bodies belonging to socially dominant groups. We argue that the new focus on the ‘body positivity’ movement involves a single-minded emphasis on beauty and aesthetic adornment, and that this undermines the original focus of social and political equality, pandering instead to capitalism and failing to rectify unjust institutions and policies. (...) As such, we argue that the ‘body positivity’ movement ultimately marginalises further the bodies for which it initially sought justice and acceptance. (shrink)

Because factory-farmed meat production inflicts gratuitous suffering upon animals and wreaks havoc on the environment, there are morally compelling reasons to become vegetarian. Yet industrial plant agriculture causes the death of many field animals, and this leads some to question whether consumers ought to get some of their protein from certain kinds of non factory-farmed meat. Donald Bruckner, for instance, boldly argues that the harm principle implies an obligation to collect and consume roadkill and that strict vegetarianism is thus immoral. (...) But this argument works only if the following claims are true: all humans have access to roadkill, roadkill would go to waste if those who happen upon it don’t themselves consume it, it’s impossible to harvest vegetables without killing animals, the animals who are killed in plant production are all-things-considered harmed by crop farming, and the best arguments for vegetarianism all endorse the harm principle. As I will argue in this paper, each claim is deeply problematic. Consequently, in most cases, humans ought to strictly eat plants and save the roadkill for cats. (shrink)

This essay traces the evolution of the pragmatist elements in Wiggins's distinctive view of truth and shows its connections to the founder of pragmatism, C.S. Peirce and one of Peirce's greatest successors, F.P. Ramsey. Wiggin's pragmatism, like that of Peirce and Ramsey, is a pragmatism that attempts to arrive at what Wiggins calls ‘a sensible subjectivism’ – an account of truth that respects both the human inventiveness and the objectivity that are each a part of our search for the truth.

The best of Peirce, James, and Dewey has thus resurfaced in deep, interesting, and fruitful ways, explored in this volume by David Bakhurst, Arthur Fine, Ian ...

Abstract:AbstractOne of the most recognized playwrights and stage directors on the African continent today, Werewere Liking is the Cameroonian founder of the Village et Fondation Panafricaine Ki-yi Mbock in Abidjan. A 2000 Prince Claus Award laureate for her contributions to culture and development, Liking has also produced impressive works of literature and art. From the beginning of her career in the late 1970s, Liking has always promoted and expanded her project of elite theater for development, with her productions of the (...) last decade bringing to the masses theater and performance as a form of resistance to the surrounding conflict and chaos in the West African nations of Cote-d'Ivoire and, most recently, Mali. The ability of Liking and the Village to carry out their projects to fruition both in times of relative prosperity as well as in periods of conflict is a testament to Liking's successful matriarchal style of African feminist leadership and shared governance made possible by the espousing of traditional African values necessary for tackling problems of a contemporary world. (shrink)

This paper will explore the engagement of Wittgenstein, Ramsey and the Vienna Circle (mostly Schlick and Carnap) in the 1920s. This is before Wittgenstein became what we know as the later Wittgenstein and one upshot of the paper will be that it was Ramsey who turned Wittgenstein away from the quest for a pure and objective language (a quest he shared with the Vienna Circle) and turned him towards the pragmatist idea that meaning is bound up with use.

Traditional approaches to animal ethics commonly emerge from one of two influential ethical theories: Regan’s deontology (The case for animal rights. University of California, Berkeley, 1983) and Singer’s preference utilitarianism (Animal liberation. Avon Books, New York, 1975). I argue that both of the theories are unsuccessful at providing adequate protection for animals because they are unable to satisfy the three conditions of a minimally decent theory of animal protection. While Singer’s theory is overly permissive, Regan’s theory is too restrictive. I (...) argue that a minimally decent animal ethic requires a framework that allows for context-dependent considerations of our complex human–animal relationship in a non-ideal world. A plausible theory which exemplifies this new ethic is virtue ethics. (shrink)

Genetic testing is currently subject to little oversight, despite the significant ethical issues involved. Repeated recommendations for increased regulation of the genetic testing market have led to little progress in the policy arena. A 2005 Internet search identified 13 websites offering health-related genetic testing for direct purchase by the consumer. Further examination of these sites showed that overall, biotech companies are not providing enough information for consumers to make well-informed decisions; they are not consistently offering genetic counseling services; and some (...) sites even offer tests with little evidence of clinical value. This article aims to raise company and consumer awareness about the ethical concerns surrounding the direct-to-consumer marketing of health-related genetic tests. It also suggests ways that biotech companies can bring their services to the public in an ethically responsible manner, without increased regulatory oversight. (shrink)